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Home sales and prices tumbled across most of California in October as the credit crisis continued to roil residential real estate markets, a trade association said Wednesday. Gregory J.Wilcox in the Daily News.

Last month sales plunged 40 percent statewide from October 2006 and the median house price declined 9.9 percent to $497,110, said the Los Angeles-based California Association of Realtors.

The association computes sales on an annualized basis, which means that if the market matched October’s pace all year, 265,030 houses would change owners.

Democratic officials announced Wednesday cancellation of the planned presidential debate in Los Angeles set for Dec. 10 because of the ongong writer strike.

The debate, scheduled to be held at the CBS studios, was called off because writers plan to picket the location and the three leading candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards said they would not cross picket lines.

There was no indication if an effort will be made to reschedule the forum before the state’s Feb. 5 election.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa steps back on to the national stage this weekend, when he joins a group of big city mayors to serve as commentators on two presidential debates in Iowa.

Villaraigosa, who has endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, will be part of a group of mayors from the U.S. Conference of Mayors who will talk about the presidential election and the candidates following the Heartland Presidential Candidate Forum and the Black and Brown Presidential Forum.

With over 85 percent of people in the United States living in our nation’s cities and metro areas, mayors clearly understand how urban issues impact every day Americans and are calling on candidates to focus on these issues, the U.S. Conference of Mayors said in a statement.

For the first time in our history, The United States Conference of Mayors is bringing a bipartisan group of mayors to the Iowa Caucuses. We believe that the issues of Iowa and the city of Des Moines are the same issues that face mayors around the country each and every day. We support Mayor Cownie and the other Iowa mayors as we present to the next President of the United States the challenges and opportunities before us, said U.S. Conference of Mayors Executive Director Tom Cochran.

NBC Universal plans to sell its entire 34-acre studio in Burbank to a development company that will inherit the right to build on the property, city and studio officials said Tuesday. Alex Dobuzinskis in the Daily News.

M. David Paul and Associates will be the builder, with help from Stockbridge Real Estate Fund, officials said. The companies have created a joint entity – Catalina Media Development II LLC – to develop the remainder of the NBC lot.

With NBC Universal set to move its operations to Universal City, the company reserves the right to lease the Burbank facility for several years while it makes the move. The daytime soap opera “Days of Our Lives” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” are among the shows produced at the Burbank studio.

Decades after Santa Susana Field Lab neighbors first asked which way
the wind was blowing during a 1959 partial nuclear meltdown at the
site, lab officials have discovered the missing meteorological
records. Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News.

The newly found data are expected to be vital in helping lab watchdogs
and researchers more accurately estimate where radiation released
during the meltdown could have moved during the accident and what
communities might have been exposed.

Last year, a state-funded study determined that radiation released
during the accident could have triggered 260 cancers in the area. But
that analysis was stunted by the lack of data from the incident,
including weather information.